E dimineaţă în altă viaţa
by TenTenD
Summary: The five people Lyanna waits for in death and the one person who waited for her.
1. Şi te-aş întreba

"Make me understand," the Dornish Princess says. There is not bite to her words. Lyanna suspects it is because death makes all things easier. There is nothing to win and nothing to lose in the sleep of the eternal. "Make me understand the reason."

A smile plays upon her lips. "Ambition. Desire. Love, even. Small bits, each of them, of this reason you seek. I could probably spend an eternity, Your Grace, explaining the reason. Though, I think your meaning is not this."

"I was unaware that you did think," Elia Martell returns with ease.

"I took a gamble, Your Grace," Lyanna replies. "I reached for the starts, thinking I might grab onto one without considering the fall. Simply put, it was a choice."

"I might have known." And this time there is something like sadness, disappointment touching the Princess' brow. "I was hoping, though. I had hoped. All t6his for a gamble."

"For glory and love and high ideals, Your Grace," comes her agreement.

It feels empty, truth be told. Lyanna is not so much surprised as she is dejected. But this, she reminds herself, is death. Elia Martell seems to still be considering her words after a few moments of silence. Lyanna waits. There is time, or rather there is no longer time.

"And which one of us would you say reached her star?" Elia is asking, intently at her.

Lyanna laughs. "I think we were reaching for different stars, Your Grace." And she leaves it at that.


	2. Dar vreme trece oricum, fără noi

"And all this for a crown of roses. What a strange world." Ned gazes at her with steady cold eyes. Lyanna returns his stare with one of her own, unflinching. "Dare I ask? 'Tis too late for what-ifs and might-have-beens."

"Ask if you so will," she replies calmly. She knows the question. She knows it well. Yet if Ned would hear the same words from her, then she will not hesitate to speak them.

"Could you not have found it in your heart to refuse?" The question glides against her, a reminder, a promise, a scold. "You have always been too stubborn by half."

"So I have," she agrees. And then she decides she won't answer the question after all because Ned has always known. Whatever explanation she would offer will forever be set up against the rigid demands of honour.

Lyanna is many things. Morally perfect is not one of them though. Her brother understands all to see that she does not mean to speak. So he fills the silence. "All is lost," he says with the knowledge of the newly deceased and the vanity of a man whose existence mattered.

"All has been lost before. Many times," she reminds him. He still thinks upon the world of the living. She wonders if he will be able to let go, but the two of them, Lyanna does truly understand, are tied still to the struggling.

"Is that supposed to bring me comfort?" he demands.

"Nay. If you seek comfort, 'tis the wrong place to find it."


	3. Dac-a fost să fie aşa

By the time Robb Stark was born, Lyanna had already died. For all that, when it comes his time, she cannot help but come to him. If there is any of Ned's children that she can relate to so wholly that it surprises even her, then Robb Stark must be the one.

When she finds him he is angry, frustrated at the gods and the perceived unfairness. But she approached him anyway, placing calming hands upon his shoulders. It's like holding back a violent storm.

"Is it regret I see upon your face?" she asks. Grey meets blue and holds. He thaws slightly. "For you, or for her?"

"For both?" Despite the form of it, she knows he means it as a statement. How alike they are, Lyanna thinks. "What will she do?"

"What do you want her to do?" Perhaps it matters not. Perhaps it means everything. Lyanna thinks that maybe any life is better than no life. But she wouldn't know, because she chose long ago her path and it led her here.

"I am selfish," Robb tells her, with the passion of a lover and the regret of a martyr. "It shouldn't be so easy to leave."

Nor should it be so difficult. "It is what it is." Indeed, Lyanna decides, Robb Stark and she, they are very much alike.

"Will I ever forget?" he questions.

"Memory is tributary to time itself and here there is no time to subjugate memory. Yours, or mine," she offers in response.


	4. Culorile se duc, de la sine

There are very few secrets in the realm of the departed. There is no shock upon Catelyn Tully's face. Lyanna herself has not expected any. She supposes she could choose to be angry, to feel resentment, to weep and scream.

"Had I know," the redhead says. There is no remorse, or shame.

"It would have made a difference?" Lyanna questions. This is not a bad woman, the one that stands before her. She can be kind and compassionate. But equally cruel. Lyanna liked her. She smiles. "It is past."

"It is past," Catelyn repeats the statement. "Were it so easy to close wounds and righten wrongs." It never is.

Lyanna nods her head. "I think we understand one another," she tells her good-sister. Perhaps not as well as they might, nor as they should. But there is an understanding, as imperfect as they are though it might be. For that, Lyanna is glad. "The wait is nearly over," she promises.

"I am glad of it," Catelyn speaks, "for I have waited a lifetime. So much waiting."

Waiting is maddening for those who are not yet at peace. But, living with the promise of soon, soon, Lyanna has learned that some form of madness is acceptable after all. A temporary thing. "It rather tends to cut and wound, does it not?"

"So it does," her good-sister agrees. The fall into oblivion will be all the sweeter for it. Lyanna smiles once again and this time Catelyn returns the gesture. "I always wondered," she discloses.


	5. Şi crezi că nu mai ştii, cum mă cheamă

Jon is the only one she cries for. He is the one she runs to, picking her skirts up, blue rose petals gliding to the ground in her wake. He looks at her wide-eyed and long-suffering. Lyanna knows she doesn't deserve the undying devotion.

Of all the people, it is for him that she should have fought, for him that she should have lived.

She is the one who wraps her arms around him, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Forgive me," is all that she can whisper, clinging to him. This is not so much about her as it is about him. She is apologising not for her absence, not for the bloodshed or for the mummery Ned enacted to protect him. For though he knows it not, she never once truly left his side.

Instead she begs his forgiveness for not believing. She had not believed it when she bore him forth into the world, nor when she'd first held him in her arms, a soft and tiny babe, nor even when she left him in the care of her brother. She had not believed, but now she dos believe.

Jon hugs her back tentatively. Her heart swells at the tiniest of touches and she looks up at him. He is not smiling, nor frowning. But his eyes stare straight into hers and he continued to hold her as a child would, hands rather gripping at the holds of her dress than properly embracing her.

"I do forgive you."


	6. Şi crezi că dragostea, se destramă

He touches a hand to her pale cheek and leans slightly in, silver pouring down, touching the sleeve of her dress, the skin of her hand. "Do not apologise," she says when she spies his lips parting for speech. "Do not dare."

Startled violet eyes scrutinise her face. "What could words possible tell you that you yet not know?" Of course he will not apologise. Lyanna does not want an apology from him.

"Nothing," she answers cuttingly. But soon enough she softens. "I once promised I would follow you wherever you chose to go."

"I had hoped this path you would not follow," he murmurs. Lyanna places a finger to his lips, silencing him.

"The dream is not yet slain," she says more to comfort him than herself. It is not exactly the dream he dreamt, but then, he is not exactly the prince she thought him to be.

He is human. That is what brings her comfort. He is human, not stone, not a god, but a man. And for a man she can be a woman. Which is all Lyanna ever wanted to be. Strange that she should reach such an understanding when it is no longer necessary.

Intention and result, expectation and reality. Lyanna does not shy from any of them because they are as much hers as they are his. "Lyanna."

"But hush and give me your hand," she instructs. Choices have been made and she will bear the responsibility of hers. She refuses to be spared.

* * *

A/N: Story title and chapter titles from Holograf's "Dimineata (in alta viata)"


End file.
